Volodymyr and Katherine Kedrowsky Papers

Biographical / Historical

Volodymyr Kedrowsky (Володимир Кедровський, Volodymyr Kedrovskyi) was a colonel in the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic (Ukrains'ka Narodnia Respublika, UNR), political activist, diplomat, writer, and radio broadcaster. He wrote under the literary pseudonyms Mykola Shram, Khersonets, Petro Chevliy, Did Buchar and Batuninets. His second wife Katherine was a Ukrainian-American who was involved in scouting and Ukrainian-American women's clubs. She was a founding member of the Ukrainian National Women's League of America (Soiuz Ukrainok Ameryky).

V. Kedrowsky was born in Kherson in 1890 into a family that had considerable land holdings along the Inhul and Inhulets rivers. As a young man, he was influenced by the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionary Party, and was active in Ukrainophile revolutionary youth groups in Kherson, which (among other things) staged performances of Ukrainian plays as propaganda campaigns among the Ukrainian peasantry. He studied at the Imperial Novorossiya University in Odessa from 1907 to 1911, obtaining a degree in statistics and economics. After graduating, Kedrowsky married fellow Kherson native Marta Odarik.

He worked at the Statistical Division of the Kherson Zemstvo until the outbreak of World War I, when he was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, in which he served as an officer. In 1917 he was appointed Deputy Secretary of Military Affairs in the UNR. He resigned in protest of the entry of German troops into Ukraine, and returned to the Kherson Zemstvo. After the fall of the Hetmanate, he was appointed Chief of Mobilization and Quartermaster General for the army of the Directorate. In early 1919 he was the military attaché of the UNR to the Ottoman Empire. In December 1919 he began a string of diplomatic assignments as UNR ambassador to Latvia, Estonia and Finland. In 1920 he was a UNR delegate at the Russian-Polish peace negotiations that lead to the Treaty of Riga, and in 1921 was a special military representative of the Directorate and personal representative of Symon Petliura to the Turkish government.

After the Bolshevik takover of Ukraine, he and his wife settled in Baden, Austria, and then immigrated to the United States in December 1923. He was active in Ukrainian-American organizations, and served as co-editor of the Svoboda newspaper from 1926 to 1933. In 1932, his wife Marta died, and he married Katherine Schutock. From 1955 to 1963 he worked for the United States Department of State and served as the chief of the Ukrainian Service of the Voice of America, where he was involved in the writing of the programs as well as an on-air reader. He died in Metuchen NJ in 1970. Throughout his career, he wrote articles on political, military, and historical topics.

Katherine Kedrowsky was born Katherine Schutock (Shattuck) in 1904 in New York City to a Ukrainian family originating from Bukovina. She was a graduate City College. Having been active in Girl Scouting since her school days. she organized the first Ukrainian Girl Scout troops at Ukrainian-American churches and settlement houses. She was a charter member and the first treasurer of the Ukrainian National Women's League of America.

Scope and Contents

This collection primarily contains materials assembled by V. Kedrowsky in the course of his work for the diplomatic corps the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Voice of America, as well as his writings. It contains some diplomatic correspondence, a significant number of radio scripts used for broadcast, an audio recording of a liturgy in the National Shrine in Washington, DC, drafts and finished versions of his writings, photographs, and ephemera. In addition, it contains material assembled by K. Kedrowsky, including photographs, periodicals, and ephemera.

Arrangement

Arranged by context of creation or genre in eight series, as follows:

Related Archival Materials

The bulk of Volodymyr Kedrowsky's papers were donated by the family to the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S. (http://uvan.org/archives/).